John Huston’s “The Asphalt Jungle” is not as tightly wound of a thriller as say, “Dial M for Murder” or countless other Hitchcock classics, but it revels in its characters and its story to make a gripping noir.
It follows a group of burglars attempting the perfect robbery, one that will score a payoff of $1 million. But everything slowly goes wrong, as it must in a noir. No character trusts one another and no one can be trusted, so everything is destined to fall apart. The interesting part is in discovering how.
Huston is careful to make the film about the slow build-up to the crime and the following aftermath, but very little of how the crime will and eventually is executed. He brings his character to the forefront in repeating right profile shots that would look perfect for a book jacket. And each one of them has their back story.
The mastermind is Doc (Oscar nominated Sam Jaffe), a German who hopes to take his earnings and escape down to Mexico. He has a thing for young Mexican girls, and it’s pitch perfect the way in which he later gets caught. Then is Dix (Sterling Hayden), the muscle of the group who may be one-dimensional but is a convincing character in his drive to return home to his family ranch bought out from under him.
And the most interesting is Emmerich (Louis Calhern), a wealthy lawyer whose only job is to bankroll the operation. But the trick is he can’t even do that. He’s bankrupt, and he plans a scheme to get all the money without even really participating. He has his own crippling doubts, a wife who sits in bed and longs for the days when she was young and happy, and a hot young mistress played by, get this, Marilyn Monroe. Yes, the iconic sex symbol got an early start in this Huston movie, not quite lighting up the silver screen with her performance but her seductive charms and presence.
There are some wonderfully intense moments peppered throughout the film, even if it is relatively without wit or humor. That’s not a failing, but a biting script would’ve made this a masterpiece.